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Quality, Customer Satisfaction

Submitted by reginalace on Fri, 05/15/2020 - 20:42

Quality health care is an essential part of the health plan of any country, state or other jurisdiction. As such, there is a link between quality of health care, customer satisfaction, legal compliance of healthcare provider, and healthcare costs. These three interlinked elements of healthcare will be explored at length in this paper.
Since healthcare involves the delicate aspect of people’s lives that is health, it is pertinent to provide quality service that will enable restoration of good health or alleviation of pain and suffering. Whatever procedures these healthcare providers run, they must operate within the provisions of the law. Therefore, the healthcare provider must strive to strike a delicate balance between delivery of quality, customer satisfaction, and legal compliance.
Most hospitals measure patient satisfaction according to five classes, which are excellent, good, satisfied, poor, and dissatisfied. For the best outcomes in healthcare, a healthcare provider should ensure that a patient is not just satisfied, but he feels that the services offered him are excellent. It is pertinent that the quality of healthcare service that is delivered to patients should be up to the mark. Quality of service is difficult to define within medical realms, but it can be thought of as the services that will not only leave a customer psychologically satisfied but also lead to the restoration of good health and full recovery from diseases. However, this is not sufficient to describe what quality healthcare is. A patient can be satisfied with services offered by a healthcare provider; however, the possibility of something subtle going wrong is still stark. For example, some patients acquire nosocomial infections while in hospital, and they might remain oblivious to this if they are not informed. In essence, patient satisfaction is not enough for the assessment of service quality offered by a healthcare provider. Quality in the healthcare sector can only be ascertained by professional audit by a qualified authority.
In offering quality services, it is also crucial to pay attention to the medico-legal aspects of health care. It is possible to become so engrossed in trying to offer the best services to the customers that a healthcare provider does not pay attention to the finer details of healthcare delivery’s legal aspects. As a rule, healthcare providers must try their best to avoid situations that would bring them in conflict with the law which guarantees safety of people’s life and health. It is fundamental to be aware of the code of medical practitioners’ conduct. This would be beneficial in decision making both at the administrative and professional level. The legal aspects of medicine remain obscure considering the dynamic and complex nature of medical interventions. Therefore, they are largely governed by intention. As such, all the measures that are put in place to enhance the quality of service delivery in hospitals and other health care centers must be proven to be inspired by good intention and informed decisions. All taken steps to improve the delivery of healthcare should be in step with legal provisions.
It is disputable issue whether it is possible to provide quality healthcare outside the precincts of the law. For example, it is questionable whether the performance of euthanasia is ethical and whether it is a subject to legal punishment. Another question that crops up in the face of euthanasia is how “mercifully” it is done. This is one among the plethora of questions that arise when matters of quality in the provision of healthcare correspond to the legal requirements.
Healthcare costs have a direct correlation to the quality of given healthcare. The quality of healthcare depends not only on the level of satisfaction that a customer receives, but it is also heavily dependent on the health state of a patient when he leaves the hospital after getting complex medical care and treatment. Highly specialized professionals are required to achieve quality and sometimes complex procedures that prompt the rise of price for healthcare significantly. For example, brain procedures involving neurosurgical interventions usually involve a lot of risk. A patient dies instantly as a result of one wrong move. As a consequence, these procedures usually require surgeons who are highly trained and well qualified. In return, a patient has to pay a lot for medical procedures.
The nature of healthcare as a basic need makes it necessary to keep healthcare costs at a manageable level. As such, legal and ethical interventions have to be put in place to ensure that healthcare remains affordable and accessible. Therefore, a compromise has to be reached where the quality of healthcare provided remains at the highest level, but the price does not rise unreasonably.
In conclusion, healthcare is a basic need that should be accessible to everyone. No doubt that different institutions offer varied quality, but there are certain basic requirements that each healthcare provider should meet in terms of quality. Nevertheless, all interventions involving healthcare should be done within the precincts of the law because healthcare practices that conflict the law are usually extremely dangerous considering the issues of people’s health and life.
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